The Uranium Report  

321 Energy has a survey of the uranium mining industry. There are a few contradictions in the data, but overall its an excellent summary of who is digging up what, where.

In the 1940s, the US government began buying large amounts of uranium in the effort to produce the world’s first atomic bomb. After World War II, the Atomic Energy Commission began examining peaceful uses. The first privately funded nuclear energy plant came online in Illinois in 1959. By the 1970s, about 250 nuclear reactors were planned across the United States – but then an accident in Pennsylvania changed all that. Three Mile Island hit, and starting in the 1980s utilities started cancelling plants. The investing public, the lay public, everyone kind of turned on nuclear power at that time. The uranium market collapsed on all those cancelled plants.

A second blow came when the Soviet Union fell apart, and enriched uranium removed from Russian bombs was blended down to reactor-grade fuel and dumped on the market. The third jolt occurred when the Clinton-administration privatised a government-owned uranium-enrichment program, and 70 million pounds of “yellowcake” was unloaded on the market. Exploration also tapered off. Wyoming once had eight uranium operations, producing 12 million pounds per year. Now it has none.